WINE TALK

WINE TALK; Sommelier, What's That Smell?

By Frank J. Prial

Published: January 13, 1999

Correction Appended

PARIS, Jan. 12—
Remember that expensive Bordeaux you sent back last year because it tasted a bit like wet cardboard? The waiter was not happy about your complaint, but after he smelled and tasted the wine, he had to agree; it was ''corky,'' that is, tainted by a bad cork. He brought you another bottle.

You may both have been wrong. The cork may not have been the cause of the odd taste at all.

Your bottle and thousands of others may have been contaminated by an insecticide that used to be applied to the wood in wine storage buildings all over France. What's more, French winemakers may have discovered the problem as long ago as 1982, but they never disclosed it to the public. The problem is believed to have affected only French wines, but precisely how widespread is not known.

Corkiness, a moldy, dank smell and taste, is usually attributed to corks improperly sanitized by the producers, mostly in Spain and Portugal. As the demand for cork-finished wine bottles has risen -- the makers of even cheap wines like the look of them -- cork producers have been hard pressed to continually make first-quality corks.

But researchers in France have discovered that insecticides once used to treat new wood used in construction may be equally at fault for bad-tasting wine. L'Express, the French weekly news magazine, first reported the findings two weeks ago in an article that had been prepared in collaboration with a monthly consumer publication, Que Choisir (What to Buy), which is similar to Consumer Reports magazine.

The article said that trace quantities of the pesticide chlorophenol had found their ways into wines from Bordeaux, Burgundy, Beaujolais, the Loire Valley, the Rhone Valley and Champagne in the 1980's and early 1990's. In those boom years, many winemakers built new storage buildings and cellars. Some of the wood used in construction had been treated with chlorophenol, and its fumes had seeped into wooden barrels and eventually into the wine itself, the article said.

While the pesticide can spoil a wine's bouquet and taste, its presence in the wood poses no health hazard to the consumer, according to not only the researchers who discovered the problem but also the French Government, which in 1994 banned the use of substances that contain high concentrations of chlorophenol.

After the article was published, Sophie Gerard, a spokeswoman for the Bordeaux trade organization, the Interprofessional Committee of the Wines of Bordeaux, announced that her organization had not disclosed the problem to the public because it preferred to help resolve the issue, rather than to ''alarm the public about a relatively minor matter.''

Last week, Bruno Borie, who heads the Union of Grand Crus, an organization representing Bordeaux's most prestiguous chateaus, said in an interview that his group chose not to communicate with the public ''collectively but to let each member act according to his conscience.''

The problem first surfaced, according to L'Express, in 1982 in a batch of Roederer Cristal, one of the most expensive Champagnes. But it wasn't until 1991 that Pascal Chatonnet, a research chemist at the University of Bordeaux who is also an employee of Seguin & Moreau, a well-known barrel-making firm, discovered the cause.

He realized that cork could not be the source of the problem when he found the telltale smell of corkiness in a batch of wine in a stainless-steel fermentation tank. It had not yet been touched by a cork, so he concluded that it must have been contaminated earlier in the production process. He announced his findings in 1993 in Paris at a professional conference that apparently was not covered by the news media.

The reaction by winemakers was immediate. Cellars were destroyed and rebuilt, and pallets for carrying wine in bottles and barrels were destroyed. In 1996, half of the Seguin & Moreau barrels that were already in the hands of winemakers were found to be contaminated and had to be destroyed, Mr. Chatonnet said. Now, purchasers get certificates of noncontamination with every barrel they buy.

L'Express noted that the American wine critic Robert M. Parker Jr. reported in his book ''Bordeaux,'' which was published last year by Simon & Schuster, that he had found odors of must and damp cardboard in bottles from 1986 and 1990 from Chateau Ducru-Beaucaillou, a prominent property in the commune of St.-Julien, suggesting that Mr. Parker had known the cause of the problem. It also quoted him as saying the problem was ''ancient history'' because Ducru-Beaucaillou had completely replaced its winemaking and barrel-aging cellars since then.

On Monday, Mr. Parker said he had been reporting on the problem ''since I first came across it, because it affected the quality of the wine.''

''I said nothing about what caused it because at the time no one knew,'' he said. ''Had I offered any suggestions, without the scientific backup, I might have been sued. Anyway, it's pretty much a dead issue now.''

Joseph Rollo, the director of international affairs for the Wine Institute in San Francisco, said on Tuesday that he had never heard of a parallel problem affecting the wine industry in the United States. ''I read all the technical journals,'' he said. ''I have never come across anything like that.''

Burgundy winemakers have been reluctant to talk about the problem here in France and say only that it has been solved. In Bordeaux, John Kolassa, the English-born director of Chateau Canon, in St.-Emilion, said that Canon had built new cellars in 1987 and that several vintages between 1991 and 1995 had been affected by the pesticide in treated wood there. After the chateau was purchased by the Chanel Group in 1996, cellar walls were sanded down, barrels burned and all suspected wood replaced, Mr. Kolassa said, at a cost of about $400,000.

Mr. Chatonnet estimated that many other Bordeaux chateaus had spent similar amounts. He observed that the situation could have been worse; many barrels escaped being tainted simply because of where they were placed in the storage building. ''Some properties had to redo their cellars entirely,'' he said, ''but at others, all they had to do was close a door to modify the air circulation.''

Reaction to the article within the French press has emphasized the industry's claim that the crisis has passed and should be forgotten. What should not be forgotten is the fact that a concerted effort was made over a period of years to keep the public in the dark. Not an inspiring chapter in the history of the French wine industry.

Tastings

A Big Solid Blend Worth the Hunt

Marietta Cellars Old Vine Red, Lot 22, California. About $10.

A NY wine enthusiast looking for a worthy project for 1999 may consider finding and buying some of this remarkable non-vintage red from Marietta Cellars. Lot 22 combines wines mostly from 1996 and 1997, a blend that includes gamay, cabernet sauvignon, carignan (which some old-time growers still call kerrigan), zinfandel and petite sirah.

Previous issues of the wine have had a Sonoma appellation but Chris Bilbro, the winemaker, apparently bought these grapes from growers all over the northern counties. Hence, the California appellation.

Some 20,000 cases of this country-style red were produced, but if past releases are any indication, it will not be easy to find; smart buyers snap it up as soon as it appears on the shelves.

This is no refined, polished cabernet; it's a big solid wine with plenty of fruit flavors. It seems tannic at first, but that can be attributed to the intense flavors. There are tannins in this wine, but they are soft. It probably could be laid down for five years or so, but it's basically a wine to be enjoyed right now or over the next couple of years.

Drawing (Matthew Martin)

Correction: March 3, 1999, Wednesday The Wine Talk column on Jan. 13, about French wines that acquired an ''off'' taste from contamination by an insecticide used on wood in some wineries' cellars, misstated the name of a French barrel maker. It is Seguin Moreau, not Seguin & Moreau. The column also referred imprecisely to the source of contamination of some barrels made by Seguin Moreau. It was at the wineries, not at Seguin Moreau, which uses only untreated wood in its barrels. The column also referred incorrectly to certificates of noncontamination for wine barrels. They are issued only for secondhand barrels. Seguin Moreau, which does not deal in secondhand barrels, does not issue the certificates. The column also misstated the relationship of Pascal Chatonnet, the research chemist who discovered the cause of the contamination, to Seguin Moreau. He was a consultant, not an employee. Correction: March 3, 1999, Wednesday The Wine Talk column on Jan. 13, about French wines that acquired an ''off'' taste from contamination by an insecticide used on wood in some wineries' cellars, included several erroneous references to the origin of the problem. A correction appears today on page F9.